At what point does a human become posthuman? Steven Pinker, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of How the Mind Works, poses the following hypothetical, which is an example of the Ship of Theseus paradox:
Surgeons replace one of your neurons with a microchip that duplicates its input-output functions. You feel and behave exactly as before. Then they replace a second one, and a third one, and so on, until more and more of your brain becomes silicon. Since each microchip does exactly what the neuron did, your behavior and memory never change. Do you even notice the difference? Does it feel like dying? Is some other conscious entity moving in with you?
Gödel's incompleteness theorem: A physical symbol system can not prove all true statements. Roger Penrose is among those who claim that Gödel's theorem limits what machines can do.
To be able to fully answer them, we'd need to know whether there is anything more to consciousness than the pure mechanical workings of the brain. Personally I believe that there is, so I'm unconvinced that an artificial mind could become truly conscious. I suppose that it's possible though: assuming that my belief is correct, it might be possible to somehow "steal" those components of an organic consciousness which go beyond the physical workings of the brain, and to then associate them with the artificial mind.
Every part of a hologram contains the image of the whole object. You can cut off the corner of a hologram and see the entire image through it. For every viewing angle you see the image in a different perspective, as you would a real object. Each piece of a hologram contains a particular perspective of the image, but it includes the entire object.
If the hologram analogy is true, then by replacing the human brain with a machine, it would leave the real hologrammatic YOU still intact due to the fact that by cutting out out a piece of a holographic picture[physical body part] the entire hologram image[identity] is still contained in the remaining pieces of holographic film, picture, n-dimensional space-time, etc.
Last edited by yahooyoda on Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Is your brain really necessary?
John Lorber, a British neurologist, has studied many cases of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and concluded that the loss of nearly all of the cerebral cortex (the brain's convoluted outer layer) does not necessarily lead to mental impairment. He cites the case of a student at Sheffield University, who has an IQ of 126 and won first-class honors in mathematics. Yet, this boy has virtually no brain; his cortex measures only a millimeter or so thick compared to the normal 4.5 centimeters.
Although the deeper brain structures may carry on much of the body's work, the cortex is supposed to be a late evolutionary development that gave humans their vaunted mental powers and superiority over the other animals. If the cortex can be removed with little mental impairment, what is it for in the first place?
(Lewin, Roger; "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?" Science, 210:1232, 1980.) Comment. Brain size, then, may mean nothing in comparing ancient and modern human skulls or human brain capacity with those of animals! Where is the seat of intelligence?
In some cases of hydrocephalus, the cortex is only paper-thin, but little mental impairments is apparent.
